A bride-to-be faces months of reconstructive surgery after suffering facial injuries from a chunk of concrete that smashed into her face after being thrown from a Highway 401 overpass near Oshawa, Ontario.
"I don't understand why somebody would throw a rock off a bridge," victim Nadia McLean said Friday.
Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said the incident, which smashed facial bones and tore away one of McLean's cheeks, was a deliberate attack with a two-pound chunk of concrete.
"This was no accident," OPP Sgt. Cam Woolley said Friday. "In fact this was a criminal act of random violence."
The concrete smashed through the windshield of McLean's Volkswagen Jetta while she was driving on Highway 401 near Simcoe Street in Oshawa at about 2 a.m. last Sunday.
Physicians took more than five days and used 50 stitches to repair the damage inflicted on McLean. She was discharged from Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital Thursday but faces months of reconstructive surgery.
Despite pain and a severely swollen face the bride-to-be vows her July 15 wedding will go ahead.
When the incident happened McLean was driving her brother and three friends home from a wedding. McLean saw what she thought was a man about to jump from the overpass, Woolley said Friday.
"She saw him raise his hand and the next thing she knew, she was unconscious," Woolley said.
Gabriel Gagnon, Nadia's fiancé, said she is trying to make sense of the attack.
"She was asking why would somebody do something like this?" Gagnon said. "This is our society today. You got all kinds of crazy people walking around," he added.
Andree Dumont was in the car with McLean when it happened.
"Right away something hit and all the glass flew in," Dumont said. "I didn't know what it was at that point … and then I looked at Nadia and realized that there was something wrong."
The car veered into the guardrail, but her brother Eric McLean, 26, scrambled from the back seat to grab the steering wheel and managed to stop the car by using the hand brake, their father said.
"He said, 'Dad, I thought she was dead because I could see inside her face,'" said the 55-year-old Sudbury, Ont., financial planner as he choked back tears.
Police first believed the concrete accidentally fell from the overpass, but Woolley said investigators are now certain it was deliberately thrown.
"We found bits and pieces of concrete up near a railway pass several hundred metres from the highway, so it became obvious that somebody had picked up this piece of concrete and brought it to the overpass and then dropped it," Woolley said.
Investigators do not have a suspect. OPP officers are looking for witnesses who may be able to help their investigation.
"It's likely somebody that lives in the area, within a kilometre or two," Woolley said.
Police speculate the culprit may have been walking home at the time. Woolley believes the person responsible may have bragged about the incident to a friend.
"So anybody that's heard anything about this, we really need to know that," Woolley said.
But McLean has an image of the man on the overpass etched in her memory.
"Just a nasty, chills down my spine, smile."
With files from CTV's Jim Junkin, John Musselman and The Canadian Press.
